"And that is. . . ?"

"In the Stone's past, no giant asteroid starship returned to the Earth–Moon vicinity."

"That might make a difference?"

"I'd think so, wouldn't you?"

She turned the page. "How long do I have?"

"I'm leaving tomorrow for Earth. You'll be going to the first circuit the day after."

"Two days."

He nodded.

"I'll be staying here?"

"If you find it acceptable. There's an office behind the stacks outfitted as a sleeping area, with food and hot plate. Porta-potty. The guards will check on you every couple of hours. You're not to tell any of them what you're reading. But if you feel any sort of distress, let them know immediately. Any sort of distress. Even just getting sick to your stomach. Understand?"

"Yes."

"I'll stay here with you this first time." He squeezed her shoulder gently. "Take a break with me in a couple of hours, okay?"

"Sure," she said.

She watched him settle into a cubicle seat. He took a slate out of his pocket and quietly typed on it.

She turned the page on the first chapter and began. She did not read in a linear fashion, instead skipping from the middle of the book to the beginning, then to the end, looking for pages where the major events were synopsized, or conclusions were drawn.

Page 15

In the last years of the 1980s, it became apparent to the Soviet Union and its client states that the Western world was winning—or would soon win—the war of technology and therefore ideology both on Earth and in space, with consequences unforeseen for the future of their nations and their system. They contemplated several ways of overcoming this technological superiority; none seemed practical. In the late 1980s, with the deployment of the first United States space-based defense systems, the Soviet states stepped up their efforts to obtain technological "fixes" through espionage and importing of embargoed goods—computers and other high-technology equipment—but this was soon shown to be inadequate. In 1991, the space-based defense systems they themselves had deployed were shown to be inferior in design and ability, and it became obvious to the Soviet leadership that what had been predicted for years was in fact happening; the Soviet Union could not compete with the free world in technology.

Most Soviet computer systems were centralized; privately owned or noncentralized systems were illegal (with a few exceptions—namely, the Agatha experiments), and the laws were rigorously enforced. Young Soviet citizens could not match the technological "savvy" of their counterparts in the Western bloc nations. The Soviet Union was soon going to suffocate under the weight of its own tyranny, remaining a twentieth- (or nineteenth-) century nation in a twenty-first-century world. They had no choice but to attempt, in the football (q.v.) terminology of the time, an "end run." They had to test the courage and resolve of the Western bloc nations. If the Soviets failed, then by the turn of the century, they would be far weaker than their adversaries. The Little Death was inevitable.